


"Disciplinary Issues"

by kyanve



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Galaxy Garrison, Gen, Pre-Canon, putting anger management issues to use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-09
Updated: 2017-03-09
Packaged: 2018-10-01 11:36:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,954
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10189073
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kyanve/pseuds/kyanve
Summary: How does the top of the class end up suddenly exiting something that'd been their lifelong dream?Well, it isn't quiet, especially when it's someone who is good at demonstrating the difference between "stealth" and "subtlety" because he's got no sense of the latter and a very personal reason to be very, very angry.  Way more than "get into a few too many fights with the wrong people" angry.  Keith doesn't have many people important to him, and has some things in common with Pidge about being perfectly willing to go obsessive and over-the-top on their behalf.





	

_Pilot error._

He managed to wait until morning. It was a long, slow night spent not really sleeping, just simmering as his lifelong goals re-oriented. 

He wanted to make it into space. He wanted to track down who and what he was.

He wanted to follow Shiro, the first person who'd been a stable positive influence in his life, who'd graduated the program already and had been on his first mission.

There hadn't been any effort to inform anyone connected to the people on the mission that he'd seen; he couldn't muster the faith in humanity to think that they'd at least contacted family members before it made the news, and he knew damn well that they knew he'd been Shiro's shadow. He could do mental math, too; five months to get out there and it hadn't been nearly long enough for them to have any real information on whatever had happened, which meant that whatever their probes had picked up, they were hiding something. 

First he wanted to tear out of the dorm, loud and angry and willing to hit things until someone gave him answers, but it was late at night and he knew that wouldn't get anywhere; he'd at least learned growing up where the lines were on getting into fights and how to hedge just short of getting himself in serious trouble. 

Then he wanted to hunt down Iverson and interrogate him, at knifepoint if need be, but Iverson had authority and ending up in prison wouldn't help Shiro if he was alive and wouldn't accomplish anything about whatever they were hiding. Besides, the last thing he wanted was to put himself in a position where the wrong person could look at his medical records, realize something was off, and to end up also disappearing as a lab rat somewhere; if they were willing to bury the Kerberos mission, they were certainly willing to vanish one idiot orphan with no family willing to associate with him. 

So he sat in his bed, in his dorm room, wanting to fidget with the knife hidden in among his belongings but not wanting to pull it out in case he was being monitored, fuming. 

First thing in the morning, as soon as people were moving and before reveille, he stormed out, hands balled into fists and face just short of a snarl, heading straight for Iverson's office. He caught the commander on his way out; he did snap to attention, but the salute was short, sharp, and angry, as close to an insult as he could make it while maintaining protocol.

"Commander Iverson, _sir_." 

The commander gave him a suspicious frown. "What is it, cadet?"

"Why was there no effort made to inform friends or family about the Kerberos mission's disappearance, _sir_."

The suspicious frown turned into a scowl. "Because the goddamn reporters can't be arsed to keep their mouths shut the second they catch wind of something."

He narrowed his eyes; the broadcast had certainly seemed like there was an official statement behind it. "There hasn't been nearly enough time for a full investigation to determine a cause, _sir_. Why is it being dismissed this fast?"

Iverson stared down at him. "Because we won't be able to manage a full investigation until we can get someone else out there, which could take years, and we have plenty to determine the cause, cadet - there's nothing out there to salvage. The mission _failed_." 

There was no way in Hell they had full data, and no way in Hell it was pilot error; everything had been going fine and he knew Shiro - as long as someone else's safety was involved, Shiro was the most cautious and focused pilot in existence. 

He glared back up at Iverson. "There's going to be some kind of review or attempt at a full check of the probes, isn't there? Sir?"

"No. Because we know what happened. It's over, Cadet, and yelling at me isn't going to change anything."

For a moment, he was seeing red, and there was every temptation to take a swing at Iverson.

But if they were lying there was a chance Shiro wasn't dead, and if he wasn't dead and they weren't going to help, then someone had to do something. 

He took a couple slow, focused breaths, reining in the anger to something he could hone and aim. He straightened his attention, and gave a more proper salute.

"Yes, sir. Understood, sir." 

He turned on one heel and walked off, keeping picture-perfect military posture and pace. 

Someone needed to do something. _He_ needed to do something. And if he was going to manage anything, then he needed to be the absolute picture-perfect model cadet until he was ready.

************

He wasn’t great at programming, not enough to completely circumvent security of the tier that was on the records and servers. The best he’d managed was finding some tools that could be used for it, and even those would only last until some of the security and maintenance routines in the computers did their checks and found the traces.

Physically breaking in to the records room was the “easier” part. 

He also wasn’t great at decoding, especially not on a deadline of fifteen minutes at most, which was why there were a few thin cards of hard drives wrapped up in material that would interfere with scanners and locators being shoved into his duffel bag; two might be relevant to what he was looking for, three had been chosen at random to make it harder to tell what he was after. Just about all of his worldly belongings worth keeping were split between it, his coat pockets, and a backpack. He’d pre-packed and prepared before he went on his breaking-and-entering hit-and-run mission.

He had five minutes left when he left the building, calmly walking over to where the wall was. He waited the two minutes for the EMP’s to start going off - one in the records room, one in the hangar, one in personnel, one in the morale and welfare office, and three small ones spaced around the wall that’d scramble parts of security just long enough for someone to climb and vault over the wall and run. The spots of things shorting out and going silent were punctuated by small explosions, some of them mostly just minor charges that would spread glue and obnoxious dyes everywhere; none of those were anything majorly destructive, and they were placed in a way that’d read more as petty vindictiveness at workstations he hated and making things difficult for instructors and commanders he clashed with than any other pattern. (He'd be lying if he said there _wasn't_ any petty vindictiveness.)

The sirens and shouting were hitting full-tilt as he made it out to some of the narrow canyon trails that’d put him out of view of the cameras as they came back on; there’d be anywhere from ten minutes to two hours with them searching the base trying to ID and corner the culprit, and scrambling perimeter patrols to spread out. He didn’t stop running and climbing until he was a mile and a half away, had dropped several small bursts of pepper spray on his trail with silent apologies to any tracking dogs they might have, and had made it up a straight bluff and onto a sheltered ledge that’d be hard to see from above or below but give some view of the landscape out a narrow window, base and all.

The sirens and alert lights were going, there were the lights of search vehicles spread out across the desert, and the entire base was a kicked hornet’s nest. They’d probably be looking for him for months, if not longer.

He checked his watch; the first aerial sweep would be passing overhead any time now, and it’d be about ten minutes for ground search to pass where he was. He had a few days’ worth of food and water in the duffel bag, along with field gear; all he really needed to do now was wait for the search to sweep past him, give them time to do a few more sweeps of that area of desert, then slip out when they started fanning out further trying to track likely avenues of escape down. There’d probably be angry people in uniform showing up at his aunt’s home by morning, and staying there for a few weeks looking for him...which was another small vindictive bonus.

Two more minutes. He didn’t usually drink much, but he’d smuggled one bottle of vaguely okay beer out wrapped in towels in the duffel bag, and he managed to get it out and have the lid off by the time the fireworks mortars he’d rigged in random places around the base started going off.

There were a lot of weird charges to his extended family's accounts over the last week that he hadn’t gone to an incredible amount of trouble to cover trail on; his few estranged relatives didn’t check their bookkeeping often enough to catch it in time, the military would probably notice it first and there’d be no question who was responsible - but it’d still be a dead end on the paper trail, since he had no intention of going near any of them ever again. He’d had a bright future with a lot of potential as a pilot. There’d been talk of fast-tracking him into an officer’s position, possibly command. He’d spent his entire life fixated on that goal, a sense of purpose and a mission he couldn’t have dreamed of deviating from. His entire past life and everything to do with that future was going up in smoke, sirens, and the engine-hum of aerial search drones. 

He’d expected it to sting, more, but there was no feeling of loss; just an odd sense of freedom to it, even if all he had to go on was suspicions and strange dreams. The stone cranny was somehow more comfortable than his bed back in the dorms, and he raised the bottle to the bursts of fireworks going off over the base with a vicious smile.

***************

It took a few hours to get the inside of the Garrison back in order, and by midday the next day, the searches had spaced out; whoever it was had to be long gone by then.

One of the instructors came to Iverson, perplexed and nervous.

"Commander? We, uh. May have a suspect."

The commander raised an eyebrow, weary and frustrated with no good target for it.

"One of the cadets is missing, and all of his personal belongings are gone from his dorm room, but there are tools that would be consistent with preparing the devices that were planted around the Garrison."

Iverson's brows knitted, and he could feel a migraine coming on; they'd already ended up expelling one cadet for breaking into offices and data, having another one go off the deep end was not news he welcomed. "Who was it."

"Kogane, sir."

He buried his face in one hand with a groan. 

There were a few beats as the other instructor was shifting weight nervously, waiting for some further response. 

"We'll need to get an investigation together to track him down."

"What do we tell the other cadets?"

The frustrated growl turned into a tone of frustrated half-defeat. "...Just...tell them there was a disciplinary issue. He's gone five months without getting into a fight, he was overdue for it and we can just...pretend he finally crossed the line until we can catch him to find out what the Hell got into him." 

Or to confirm a lingering suspicion that he never wanted to hear the words "Kerberos Mission" ever again.


End file.
